RECORD numbers show up to Florida gun show: ‘Never seen such a big crowd’

(National Sentinel) Guns, right? Record numbers showed up to a Florida gun show held this weekend at the state fairground in Tampa in the wake of a horrific school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and amid new talk of gun bans and restrictions.

As reported by local CBS affiliate WTSP, organizers estimated that around 7,000 people showed up on Saturday, with more expected on Sunday.

George Fernandez, the manager of the Florida Gun Show event, said he’s never seen a crowd so large.

At the request of the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, the company canceled a gun show event there next month as a show of respect for the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting earlier this month.

“Some of the people attending are afraid that future legislation will impact their gun ownership rights,” Fernandez told the local affiliate.

Some lawmakers — mostly Democrats including U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson — say they want new gun control legislation, especially provisions that fix the so-called “gun show loophole” which allows the sale of guns between private individuals at such shows without a background check. However, private sales between individuals at any time are not subject to background checks; licensed firearms dealers — at their shops or at gun shows — are required by federal law to run each buyer through the FBI’s National Instant Background Check System (NICS).

Nelson also wants a new ban on so-called “assault weapons,” which he claimed cut down on murders nationwide after a ban implemented by Democrats and President Bill Clinton in 1994 was implemented; the law expired in 2004.

“Before that law, they were high and after that law, when the NRA killed the law in 2004, the number of deaths as a result of assault weapons has grown up like a rocket taking off,” he says.

However, according to the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice, the ban on certain types of look-alike military weapons could not be attributed to a reduction in crime. Also, other Democrats who have asserted that such weapons have led to a major increase in mass shootings have been judged to be mostly false.

Fernandez told WTSP that about 95 percent of vendors at the weekend gun show were required to run background checks on buyers because they are licensed dealers.

As for private transactions of guns, some Florida counties have passed ordinances requiring private buyers to also be subject to a background check.

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